Review of Nim's Island (2008) by Liz C — 09 May 2009

Saw it with my 8-year old daughter, and we both liked it. The theme of a girl living with her dad on a fantastic tropical island with mostly animals as companions, that has to manage much by herself, and even more so when her dad goes missing is a good one to capture the attention.

There is also a nice balance between the adventure part of the story and the deeper personal/relational one having to do with how surface events relate to the girl's own myths about her deceased mother.

On top of that it's as much a story about the obsessive-compulsive disordered writer of the adventure stories admired by the girl, played by Foster. A link between the two is created through an email correspondence that transforms into what eventually becomes an actual meeting but with the fictional hero Alex Rover as an intermediate (through the fantasies and misunderstandings of the girl and the compulsive thoughts of the nutty writer).

Foster's playing is partly hilarious, almost slapstick, when moving from someone who can't even go out to get the mail to a fearless adventurer that comes to an unlikely rescue. Breslin is very very charming, but the nice thing is that the underlying sadness and loneliness is the most obvious of her condition, despite her ability to manage and the paradise of her surroundings.

The closure with regard to this is also the final endpoint of the story, which for me lifted the marking a bit.